Monday 31 August 2009

CIFOR-Panos Media Training during WCA2009

Around twenty African journalists, a fraction of more than 100 registered journalists to cover the 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry (WCA 2009), arrived earlier in Nairobi last week to attend a media training facilitated by Panos London and Panos East Africa under the support of Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Nairobi hosted the training held from 22nd to 27th of August.

According to Ana Abar, one of the Panos facilitators, the training functions as a place for the participants to build an in-depth understanding on climate change issues important to do their work, especially when they come to Copenhagen later this year to cover the climate change talk.

A number of experts on climate change issues from CIFOR and ICRAF were invited to present their ideas. On the second day, Dr Peter A Minang of ICRAF talked about the need for Africa’s common voice on the climate change negotiations. A day earlier, Dr Dennis Garrity, ICRAF’s Director General provided the journalists an overview about the WCA2009 and the ideas on agroforestry as the future global land use.

“The participants are environmental and science journalists working at local-national TV, radio, and print media in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Tanzania, and South Africa. This training is also a venue for them to get to know each other better and build partnership among for future collaborative media work,” said Ana, a Brazilian now residing in London.

Henry Lutaaya from the Sunrise Newspaper in Uganda shared the same idea.

“I came here with a hope to meet and exchange views with other journalists working on climate change issues.”

He suggested an improvement to the program.

“More experts from different background such as economists, social scientists, and environmentalists, to come and talk to us on the subject would be very very good,” said Henry while expressing his delight to be able to work together with Alex Kirby, a BBC veteran environmental journalist.

“We learn a lot from experienced journalists!”

Originally posted on Tue, 08/25/2009 - 13:13 at the following link: http://www.worldagroforestry.org/wca2009/node/60

No comments: